The thing about coming up with grand ideas is that they just might only be grand in the mind of the one who comes up it. My guess is that the man who thought this scheme for simple subtracting up thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it would seem that the ones who want to cram Common Core down your child’s throat were more than happy to hop onto that wagon. Just think about it, all those thousands of years of adding and subtracting the easy way, and it was just all wrong.
Or maybe not.
From this article.
365 Reasons To Homeschool 
I have been reading about th history of math education. It is fascinating.